I, Dystopia
by Butterflycat
Summary: Dystopia is the daughter of an eccentric woman who disappeared when she was two. Now, as she begins to unravel a mysterious government plot based on bio-weapons, she must journey to save her best friend. Based loosely on the world of Legend. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

I woke to the sound of my holographic alarm clock graciously trying to shatter my eardrums. I started my perfectly timed routine for the day. 12 seconds to get out of the room, 15 to walk down the stairs, 20 minutes to gulp down six cubic inches of gray-purple jello. 32 minutes and four seconds to jog to work. Our exercise level was as strictly monitored as our education course. The morning was tapping away at our Holos and the afternoons were quite the same. All young children attended school until they learned how to read, speak and walk. I graduated before most people, earning me a less laborious job to dedicate my life to.

The polyester-microfiber elevator slid up the narrow black chute. When it reached floor 822 I stopped it and walked into my mini cubicle. I sat down at the table and pressed the button that levitated the flat Holo to a 62-degree angle. A face popped onto the screen. It was old and wearing a top hat the caption said " Abraham Lincoln" This was definitely a random useless photo. Tap, delete. A short documentary appeared in its place. This specific one was about the harmful GMOs in chicken. I almost broke into a laugh. Honestly, did these people think organic was ever going to be legal? I stopped myself before I laughed. Laughing took up time, and time was monitored down to the hundredth of a second. Tap, delete. Another face. Tap, delete. Tapping and deleting, I spent my morning the same way I spent the thousand before it.

Lunch was the usual mixture of tinted purple oatmeal and blue smushed jello. The purple was a nutrient that the FDA added to almost everything. Nobody except top officials knew what the purple fluid was. The general public did not complain because it gave you a clear feeling after you finished.

"Hi, Topi"; my friend Sera plopped her tray down next to me. Sera, like me, graduated pretty early so we coincidentally got assigned the to the same building. She was also responsible for the nickname that had sentenced me to a lot of teasing. Oh well, I didn't know there was going to be a boy named Tobi in my class. I also wanted to complain, why did I have to be named Dystopia? why not something generic like Emily? Alice checked her monitor, "I have 15 minutes left" she complained "It must be a busy day". We all had a assigned amount of time to eat our lunch that could range from ten minutes to thirty.

"I have 20" I replied.

"Lucky" she sang

"Not really, my afternoon shift is filtering through the files and lawsuits that go against the government."

"Deleting day?" She asked

"Yes of course". We spent the rest of our lunch chatting about the latest news. Sera eventually got up to return to work and I decided to go as well.

As I was tapping away at the Holo when I saw a strange caption under one of the files.

_Missing family _

_2066 SabrinaC Dr _

This file was almost thirty years old! The case was incomplete and the money was never paid. My monitor gave off a small beep. The message that flashed across it gave me a shock.

_Delete file immediately_

_This is an order from the central gov._

_Failure to obey will result in automatic imprisonment_

With no hesitation I deleted the file and all links in it. Calls from the government were rare, but when they came they were to be first priority for the receiver. I proceeded to tap and delete the rest of the day with no more deviation from the regular routine. As I walked home I found myself wondering at the desperation in the message from the government. They had threatened imprisonment. This was serious. The prison center was the jailhouse for all criminals. It was called Alcaban, a word combining Alcatraz and Azkaban, two very notorious prisons. An architectural monstrosity, it stood 2000 stories high and covered 100 acres of desert. If you were lucky they would keep you in one of the middle floors where you were still in the troposphere and you could see sunlight. I started to walk faster, my thoughts were slowing me down. When I glanced down at my monitor a few moments later my heart almost stopped. My time of travel had been increased by two minutes. We were not supposed to think too much. The impact of thinking was obvious: wasted time. Two minutes is unacceptable, the government would be notified.

I started my next day with breakfast and a nervous tick. My knee kept bouncing and I couldn't stay still. Horrific thoughts filled my mind in the silence of my house. Scenes of being shipped off to Alcaban and dying of hunger, disease or asphyxiation. As I walked to work I was conscious of every guard on duty. One of them would step out of line and single me out, telling me that I needed to report to the courthouse immediately. I would obey quietly and walk toward the dark, looming structure. . . No, I would not think about that, I would calmly and normally amble toward my pristine workbuilding like nothing had ever happened yesterday. My nerves were stretched so taut that when Sera popped up next to me I gave a little inelegant shriek.

"What's with you today Topi?" she asked laughing slightly. "You almost jumped out of your skin!"

"I guess I'm just a little nervous about the trials". This was not completely a lie, the annual testing of job capability determined whether you would spend the next year sleeping on the streets or working in a fancy office building. This test was also proven to be a number one stress factor in the UST (United Sectors of Tashive).

"Oh ya, I'm stressed about that too". From there we settled into a conversation of the most tedious assignments we had ever gotten and the most interesting. I wanted to bring up the file from yesterday but it had caused me enough discomfort already and I wanted to forget about it. I gladly focused on my best friend. We stepped into the building laughing and got shushed by a dutifully irritated guard. Every officer on duty has to look slightly pissed off, its in their job description. I worked through the morning with an amused smile. Sera had that effect on people; she made them laugh and forget whatever worries they were clinging on. I, on the other hand, always seemed to make people uneasy. _Yay me. _

I stepped down to the lunch floor at 11:32 am. I scanned the room for Sera. She wasn't there. I sat down at an empty table; Sera was probably having a busy morning. Maybe her time would still overlap mine. Even if it didn't I could still find her after my shift was over and talk. Then, in the middle of a noisy crowded cafeteria, I got the one thing everyone feared most. The message on my monitor was straightforward: report to the main office now.


	2. Chapter 2

I walked to the office slowly with a million thoughts flash-flooding my brain. This was because of the 2 minutes I had lost yesterday. I was going to Alcaban. Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh

Oh my gosh

Oh my gosh

Oh my gosh

Oh my gosh

I stepped into the office and a stern-looking officer greeted me. I sat down.

"Miss Dystopia Demarko, we have very important and grievous news for you." I froze in my seat, not trusting my voice to speak. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for what would happen next. "Miss, it seems that a co worker of yours has disappeared. Her name is Sera Doane.

This can't be happening. I had come to the office in a daze, only worrying about me when it didn't occur to me that this could be a DPC-Disappearing Person Cases- issue. This was not uncommon, the average person experienced one disappearing of a loved one in a life. When the victim had disappeared for more than an hour they started searching. If the search was unsuccessful then they would notify close friends and relatives, then set up a case for it. The cases were never solved. I walked out of the room and down the hallway with all the facts about dissaps (The victims) running through my head. These disappearances were common in young children and teenagers. There had been a drastic increase in dissaps over the past 20 years.

I barely registered a message scrolling across the screen of my monitor. Apparently I was excused from work for the rest of the day. I walked back to my house slowly, With my luck, I probably would have wandered aimlessly into a bad neighborhood and been robbed if I hadn't walked this way a million times. When I got home the sullen silence of isolation greeted me and I sat down to read a book. I quickly gave up and took some hot jello to my room. With no distractions, I started to remember Sera.

These were not earth-shattering moments of friendship, these were just the everyday laughs we could get over and the countless times we disagreed over something and made a hilariously big deal over it. I remembered in flashes. . .

I was sitting on a wooden chair in school. It was the last year I was in school. I kept peeking at other peoples papers because I forgot to study. _Oops. _The brunette on my right turned toward me.

"Are you copying?". At the time I had no idea what to say, oh no, she was obligated to tell the teachers. She smiled at the look on my face and deliberately-but carefully- revealed her answers for all the questions. I looked at her in surprise. She passed me a note.

_I know you're smart_

_I know you stayed up all night_

_Reading __**Almost Home**_

_So ya_

_#HelpIsOntheway_

_:)_

I smiled and hurriedly scribbled down the answers, getting a few deliberately wrong to decrease suspicion. During lunch I sat with the girl. Her name was Sera. I wouldn't realize she spelled it with a "e" until three months later, when she didn't get her worksheet back. I had wrote "Sarah" on it instead of Sera. Being herself though, she forgave me.

In level 5, we burst out laughing in the middle of a serious lecture in reading. Our passage was about the disease killing bananas and we couldn't take it. We both got sent out to the hallway and were sternly talked to. We were the top students though so we were excused with a few not-too-subtle threats.

I remember all the boys who would follow her around at recess. Afterward I would tease her about it non-stop and feel relieved that it wasn't me.

I remember the rainy days where we fell into puddles and playfully pushed each other into mud banks.

There was the other type of rainy though, when we fought, and almost grew apart. I didn't want to think about that right now though so I concentrated on the countless other memories I had unintentionally stored up inside my head. Sometime later, I drifted off to sleep. . .

I woke up with a start in the middle of the night. The jello was sitting there, untouched and cold. Sleeping again was not an option for me right that instant so I crawled to my computer and turned it on. I didn't know what I was looking for but I started to type anyway. Pressing the search bar, I scanned the appearing titles.

_How to: Disappearing apple trick_

_ : The official website_

_Our Disappearing Pineapple crop_

_. . ._

Useless, all useless. I was starting to lose hope with the search engine until I came across something very strange.

_What is the purple fluid?_

_The government doesn't want you to know_

_Here is the answer and here is the harms_

_it has done to our country and planet_

_posted 20 seconds ago_

What? I clicked the bar and a window popped onto the screen. It read:

_**Our daily rations and beverages are all tinted purple. The purple is commonly referred to as "the purple fluid". Little do people know that this fluid is actually a dormant- but potent- basic chemical that does not fizz on contact with acid or water. Instead it neutralizes acids to make it harmless.**_

_**Now the question prevails, why is the government feeding us this? I have the answer. Before I enlighten you, however. I must give you a quick history lesson. I apologize, I can hear you groaning. In 2020 we were still the USA and the top secret research lab in Haycock ES created a new element. They called it Spinellium. It was a dangerously powerful acid due to its astonishing amount of protons. They soon found that it would literally suck pollution out of the air if tossed upwards. The amazing thing about it is that the element remained unchanged even though the gases were completely gone. Yes, gone. They quickly shared this news with several important world leaders. Two years later the ECA was in full blast. As you know, the ECA (Environmental Correction Agency) was responsible for supposedly finding environmental breakthroughs to improve our lifestyle while making new technology. However, they didn't change our lifestyle for the environment. They made it more harmful and damaging. Then they converted the Spinellium into a gaseous form then let it loose into our dissipating ozone layer. It worked, flawlessly. People worshipped them. They injected into the wildlife and natural habitats. The only warning of disaster was the sandstone in the grand canyon. It had started to fizzle out of existence. Then, our lungs started to dissolve. Yes, dissolve. All the researchers and team members began to experience pulmonary disorders. They were dead before the week was out. Reports started flying in from all directions. People around the world started to develop symptoms. Girls seemed to have more of an immunity to this gaseous acid but they developed serious rashes and sores on their skin. The immunity also seemed to have an inverse relationship with your capability to annoy in boys. The top scientists in the world (The ones who were still alive) banded together and discovered pomquestium, the purple fluid. It is created by a series of complex chemical reactions but at its most basic level, it is a previously undiscovered isotope of the element Astatine.**_

_**You may be severely shocked by now but read on. The purple fluid counteracts the acid temporarily and provides the user with short-period immunity. This is why the sky is still blue, however, this is also why just about every species of animal is extinct. It would be fine, albeit bad. Now we are faced with an impending doom. The pomquestium is running out. . .**_

_**This is why people are disappearing. The government has found that some of the newer generations contain naturally immune humans. They have captured them for studying. If we run out of this fluid, if we fail to discover the secret of immunity, we are all doomed. **_


End file.
